Genetic Testing and Personalized Medicine

Personalized medicine for cancer patients represents a new approach to treatment planning in which physicians use genetic testing of the tumor to plan treatment and predict disease outcome. New genetic testing methods developed through the Human Genome Sequencing Project www.genomics.energy.gov have made it possible to look inside cancer cells at a patient’s tumor genome and see the diseased version of the patient’s normal genome. Information about the tumor can be used to identify prognostic markers (predictors of disease outcome) and therapeutic targets (features of the tumor that can be targeted by chemotherapy). This new ability to personalize treatment and predict disease outcome using tumor genome analysis represents a new era in cancer care different from the “one-size-fits-all” approach to cancer treatment that has been used in the past. This new approach is a big step forward because it has been known for a long time that even among patients with the same type of cancer, the behavior of their cancer and response to treatment, can vary widely. Through tumor genome testing, it is becoming increasingly clear that specific characteristics of cancer cells and cancer patients can have a profound impact on prognosis and treatment outcome. Although factoring these characteristics into treatment decisions sometimes makes cancer care seem more complex, it is through understanding and embracing the complexity of a tumor genome that the promise of improved outcomes becomes a reality.